Mon 19 Mar 2007 carries an obituary for a South African genealogist, Robert Laing of Colington, who died on 12 March, 2007, in Johannesburg, aged 58.

Robert Laing was sometime chairman of the Genealogical Society of South Africa, and was an enthusiastic researcher into genealogy and heraldry, though rather given to claiming dubious and even outright spurious titles for himself, though his friends and fellow genealogists usually good-humouredly granted them to him, and he was referred to in the Genealogical Society’s publications as Chevalier Robert Laing, and Robert Laing of Colington.

We had some common research interests as Dorothea Wilhelmina Katerina FLAMME (1816-1858) married Peter LAING in Cape Town in 1836, and they had three children, who went to Scotland with their father. Robert Laing never managed to establish the connection between himself and this Peter Laing, but he did spend quite a lot of time researching it.

One Response

Hi Steve,
how our paths keep crossing. I was trying to find the contact details of Robert Laing, whom I have not seen for a few years (not since 1995) and found the obitury instead. How sad. Robert took Russian lessons with my great aunt Eugenia de Ladizhensky, and as fascinated with Russian nobility. He kindly gave me
my family’s crest as a present one day, that which my aunt gave to him, as the 2 found a relationship connection….